Guardian
by Kwizzic
Summary: You learn to throw a punch instead of reaching for a sword you don't have, and you content yourself with turntables that only make music. (Alpha!Dave, post-scratch)
"I was born in '72... back then what rapping meant,
basically, was you trying to convey something—  
you're trying to convince somebody.  
That's what rapping is, it's in the way you talk."  
\- Del the Funky Homosapien

* * *

Your name is Dave Strider, and you've always been lost.

Dumped by some deadbeat parents you never knew at the site of a meteor impact, who the fuck does that? You'd think they could have at least left you at a bus stop or train station like a decent set of child-abandoning scumbags. But no, they found the nearest crater and chucked you into it beside the corpse of some poor pony.

You'd even made the local news, December 3rd, 1976; apparently meteor babies aren't too common in Texas. There was also a brief, useless attempt to find your parents, and then another brief, useless attempt to pawn you off on some other poor family. Neither effort came to anything, and you were bumped between different foster families for fifteen years.

Not because someone adopted you at fifteen- no, even _you_ wouldn't want to adopt you, a weird red-eyed kid who liked collecting dead things and drawing intentionally terrible comics and latched onto rap with a stubborn ferocity instead of listening to rock bands like any normal teenager. Fifteen was just when you called it quits and ran.

You thought it would help.

It didn't.

* * *

1991

You're fifteen and living on the streets and it's hard.

Nobody wants to offer you a real job, and the ones you can snag don't pay well. You don't stay in one place longer than a week or two, and you're not experienced enough that you know the places to go to get a free meal or a safe bed. Even the people who _can_ help, _want_ to help- they take one look at you and ask where your parents are.

Where the fuck indeed.

It's a cold night and you just finished helping move crates at a warehouse downtown. You only got eighteen bucks for three hours of work, but the foreman is doing you a favor by not asking for ID or any shit like that so you're not about to complain.

You're tired and hungry as only a teenager can be.

Maybe that's why you don't notice them coming up behind you.

They get you as you pass an alleyway, one grabbing your jacket hood and yanking you into the dark. He slams you against the brick wall and you wheeze, the breath pushed out of your lungs. Your shades are knocked askew and you squint up at your attacker.

Oh.

"Hey, man," you croak. "Fancy seeing you here."

Your new coworkers at the warehouse. Two teens, not much older than you. Funny; you'd kind of liked them. Thought they were chill.

"Dave, buddy," says the one not pressing you to the wall. "Listen, we're a little strapped on cash. Thought maybe you could help out."

You think of the eighteen dollars in your pocket.

"Can't help you," you rasp. "I'm broke."

"You just got paid."

"Spent it."

The one pressing you to the wall rolls his eyes and-

"Ow, fuck!" you yelp, dizzy with pain. He punched you, the sonofabitch, and your head is ringing. "I told you, I don't got any cash-"

"We're not stupid, Texas," the guy growls. "Give us the cash and we'll call it even."

Your heart is beating in your throat, but you tip up your chin. You're on the small side but you're fast. They don't have any weapons and they're not much bigger than you, and they might beat you up pretty good but they aren't gonna kill you.

"Can't give you cash I don't have," you say.

You ram your chin into his arm and he yells and steps back.

You reach for your sword- _what sword, you've never used a sword, nobody uses swords_ \- and your hand closes over air. Your ears are ringing and not just because of the asshole's right hook. You're missing something and you can't think _what._

You hesitate a moment too long.

He punches you in the gut and you fall to the ground.

While you're still doubled over in pain, you're just barely conscious of the guy shoving his hand in your pocket and pulling out a handful of crumpled bills. Fuck, there goes dinner.

"Nice doin' business with you, Texas."

* * *

 _1992_

You're sixteen and in love.

There's a girl working the convenience store three blocks down from your most recent job. She's maybe a year older than you, with a wicked grin and red horn-rimmed glasses and an angular face. She's loud and rude and incredibly cool, and she likes your shades and your rap, and you draw her shitty comics on the back of receipts.

"Mr. Striiiiiider," she drawls when you walk in the door. "Can I help you?"

"I thought you were going with 'Mr. Candy Apple'," you say, walking up to the register nonchalantly. "Have a crisis of faith in your ability to invent shitty nicknames?"

"I'm coming up with a new nickname for every time I see you," she explains. "Obviously. I wouldn't want to be predictable."

"Strider, though?"

"Sounds like a man of mystery, right?"

"Sounds like a porn star." You nod approvingly. "I like it."

That makes her laugh, and you get some instant noodles off the shelf to maintain the pretense of coming by for any reason besides talking to her. Hey, you're a cool guy. You talk to pretty, smart, funny girls all the time.

"Anything special going on tonight?" she asks, wiggling her eyebrows.

"You know me," you say. "I've always got shit going on. Peons worshipping me, adoring fans falling over themselves to hear my every word. It's tough being the best rapper on the face of the fucking planet."

"You poor thing," she says with mock sympathy. "Unrestrained adulation must be _so_ tiresome."

"Hells of annoying," you agree.

"But Daaaave," she says, leaning on the counter. "Just between you and me... I'm trying to ask you on a date."

You blink. "Sorry."

"You. Me. Tonight. A date." She looks at you expectantly. "You in or not?"

"Fuck yes," you finally manage to say. "I am way fucking on board with that."

You don't have an apartment or a stable job or more than a couple of T-shirts and jeans to your name, but you are head over heels for this girl and you think maybe this was the emptiness you needed filled all those years of wandering.

You go on one date (you walk in the park and get hot dogs from a hot dog guy and she makes snarky comments about people you see, and you think she's amazing) and then another (you sneak in the back of the movie theater and get chased out halfway through) and another (drawing SBaHJ in chalk on the sides of buildings until a police officer chases you away) and another and another.

She doesn't leave you when you explain you're on your own, you don't have much money. She doesn't look down on you when you admit you've been living on the streets. You tell her everything you've never told anyone- that you feel like you were born in the wrong time and the wrong life- and she understands.

"You're an artist," she says. "You have a calling, but you just don't know what it is yet."

"Fuck my calling," you say. "I'm a free agent."

She shrugs. "I've got a knack for reading people," she says. "And I can read you."

"No way," you shoot back. "This book is shut tight. Also upside down. I am unreadable."

"Your mind is sooo legible," she corrects. "Like, written in large print for old people and also Braille. Dave, you can't run away from fate."

"Fate isn't real."

"Isn't it?" She waggles her eyebrows and you kiss her to shut her up.

It's a moot point.

You've only been dating for two months when she leaves for college. She's only seventeen; she skipped a grade in middle school. She's studying Pre-Law, and if anyone would be a good lawyer it's her, fiercely intelligent and driven and razor-sharp. It still seems bitterly unfair.

"Keep in touch?" you ask, with little hope.

"Mr. Strider," she says, grinning, and the answer is in her eyes. "You've got shit to do."

You don't see her again. You take a few days to piece yourself back together, and then you hitch a ride out of town with the first person who offers. You don't know where you're going, but you figure you'll be fine anywhere but here.

* * *

 _1993_

You're seventeen and still running rough on the streets when somebody throws you a bone.

"Hey, kid," the bartender asks conversationally. "You got a place to stay for the night?"

You're a regular in Renée's seedy bar. She's the owner as well as the bartender, and a pretty decent lady to boot. She's about fifty, probably, with a wry sense of humor and a blunt attitude. But anyone who'll let a scrappy homeless kid hang around in her bar is all right in your book. Plus, she's usually willing to give you a free meal or some cash in exchange for moving crates or washing dishes.

"A place to stay? That depends." You dip your shades and wink at her suggestively. "You offering?"

Renée rolls her eyes and swats you with a dishcloth. "Look, brat—"

"Dave," you correct her, though she's never called you anything but 'kid' or 'brat' in the six months you've known her. "Or at least something cool-sounding. 'Mr. Strider', or some shit."

"Shut up and listen for a minute," she says impatiently.

With an effort, you shut up and listen.

"We hired a guy to come in and play some music, but the scumbag cancelled on us." She points at you. "I need someone who can fill in."

"I'm not a musician," you point out. "Unless you want me to rap for this crowd?"

"We need a DJ," she says. "You told Ellie that you know your way around a turntable. Is that true, or were you just bullshitting her?"

"Sure as hell I can."

She raises an eyebrow. "Really?"

Now you're a little offended. "You are talking to a master of the art. Records are putty in my hands. The sweet music I make will be like water in a land of famine, and all those poor wretches in this joint will embrace every note that reaches their parched ears."

"Excellent," she says crisply. "You start in an hour. We have the gear."

"Sure thing, ma'am," you say, saluting. "You mentioned a bed?"

"You can kip in the back room for the night; Sadie's just got married, so it's not being used. There's a shower and a sink and a twin bed, so it'll do ya nicely." She gives you a stern look. "No guests, no smoking, no noise, and you're out tomorrow, you hear?"

"Roger that." You've been dying for a shower.

* * *

You _rock_ those turntables.

"Not bad, kid," Renée says at the end of the night. "You sounded like a pro."

In truth, it had been a bit tricky at first. You hadn't touched a set of turntables since your high school days back in Texas, when you'd joined the music club just so you could use their gear. Being a DJ isn't exactly a cheap hobby.

But once you'd gotten back in the groove- well, you hadn't been lying to Ellie. You always did have a knack for it. Hell, you'd even gotten a few drunk customers dancing, and wasn't _that_ a show.

( _Forget that when you reached for the records it felt shallow, that you could have been reaching through something vast, pulling yourself into another time and place with the music in your bones_.)

You nod at Renée. "Dude, my pleasure. And hey, if the scumbag ever cancels on you again—"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about," she says. "I was just in the back with Greg, and he agrees. We can offer you another gig on Thursday."

You stare at her.

She evidently takes your stunned silence as hesitation, because she continues: "Same deal with the bed, and we'll pay you fifteen bucks an hour to start with. I know that's a fair bit cheaper than the going rate, but since we're providing the gear we'd like to see how you do before bumping it up."

"Definitely yes," you blurt out. "That sounds awesome."

"Great." Renée shakes your hand with a smile. "Now go to sleep, kid, you're wrecked."

Two weeks later, Renée offers you a job as a regular.

You're running a gig every night, eight hours from opening at five PM to closing at one in the morning, and you're getting twenty bucks an hour plus tips. You get in some real practice with the turntables and it helps you to ignore that something's _missing_.

You almost forget the stinging emptiness in your gut. There's still a niggling sense of _wrongness_ , the idea that you should be doing something with someone you've never met. You push that feeling away. What could be wrong? You're making a good living and doing what you love.

You'll just have to learn to be satisfied.

* * *

1994

You're eighteen and you just rented an apartment of your own.

You've found a living as a successful DJ. People _liked_ your music, they were paying money to listen to you and you saved enough out of your wages to get your own mixing gear. Now you have a place of your own for the first time in your life, two blocks down from Renée's bar.

An apartment makes things easier. You're not a lost kid bouncing from house to house, or a lost teenager bouncing from job to job. You learn to throw a punch instead of reaching for a sword you don't have, and you content yourself with turntables that only make music.

People are actually requesting you by name as a DJ- 'Dave Strider' is what you call yourself. It sounds better than 'Dave, orphan' or 'Dave, homeless teen', even if it still sounds a little like a porn star.

It's nice.

* * *

 _1995_

You're nineteen, you're crying, and you don't know why.

Renée called you the other day to ask if you could do a gig at her bar. Obviously you said yes; turning down the woman who gave you your first real break would be an asshole move even for you. You haven't let her pay you, either. You're not a great person, or even a good one, but you know you'll never not be in her debt.

It's an hour before the bar opens and you're setting up your gear.

That's when it happens.

Cameron, Ellie's replacement, is fiddling with the old TV in the back. "Damn shitty thing- oughta upgrade to CrockerCorp, I swear- the antenna's bent—"

The screen bursts from static into light and a newscaster is mid-sentence.

"—with great sadness that we note the death of the comedian John Crocker, who passed away yesterday at the age of eighty-six..."

There's a picture on the screen.

It's an old man. You've never seen him in your life. He's got messy gray hair and dumb-looking buckteeth, and bright blue eyes behind square-framed glasses. A button-up shirt and a bowtie and a kindly smile.

 _Crash._

You drop the crate in your hands and it clatters to the floor. Probably dented a floorboard. Renée casts you a stern look, but you barely notice. Your ears are ringing and the pain that dulled to an ache over the last few years is fresh and sharp and raw, and you feel like you've lost your best friend.

"Dave?" That's Renée, worried enough that she's calling you by your name. "Dave, what's wrong?"

You blink up at the TV screen.

"-including the performance of Judge Johnny Stone in _Night Court_ , this is certainly the departure of a comedy legend. Mr. Crocker leaves behind a son and a newborn granddaughter." The newscaster clears her throat. "Now, on to the weather."

It's wrong, all wrong.

You don't care about comedy, not unless it involves irony and shitty comics, and you've never heard of this cornball grandpa, and you're not particularly sentimental about death. But there's an emptiness inside you that's telling you _yes, him_ , and there's something telling you that _you should have known him._ And he's dead and that hurts for reasons you don't understand.

"- _Dave!_ " Renée is shaking you.

"Huh?" you ask, blinking hard. Your voice comes out a little raspy. "What's wrong?"

"You're _crying-_ are you okay?"

You frown, because she should know by now that you don't cry. But something stops you- there's wetness on your cheek. When you lick your lips, the taste is salty.

Fuck, you _are_ crying.

"I'm fine," you say, even though you're not really sure about that. "Sorry, I didn't mean to bust up your floorboards."

Renée gives you a searching look, but you don't have an answer for her.

"Did you know him?" Cameron asks you, low and sympathetic. "John Crocker?"

 _Yes_ and _no_ are competing on your lips and you don't know which one is the right answer. Eventually you shove your hands in your pockets and clear your throat.

"No," you decide on. "It's just. He reminded me of a guy I knew once."

Renée touches your shoulder. "Do you want to take the night off?"

You shake your head. "I'm fine."

You finish the night with some of the best music you've made yet. You can lose yourself in it, in feeling the tick-tock of the beat in your bones and letting your hands fly without thinking. Music and rhythm, all around you, and no empty place in the song for a piano.

The customers applaud you when you're done. Renée, as always, offers to let you stay in the back room instead of walking back to your apartment so late. You say thanks but no thanks.

The next morning, you leave the city.

You don't know where you're going, and you don't know why.

But you have a feeling you're running out of time.

( _So little time, when all eternity should be at the tips of your fingers, a rhythm you know by heart and soul and breath. Minutes and hours slipping through your grasping hands, counting down to what you don't know, but you know you have to hurry.)_

Counting down.

* * *

1996

You're twenty years old and living in California.

You gave up being a DJ. It was a sour taste in your mouth after a while, when you couldn't touch your turntables without feeling that sense of _hurry hurry hurry_ , and never being able to know what it was you were supposed to hurry up and do.

You draw more comics instead. The utterly ironic legacy of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff is continued, in between the jobs you take to scrape a living. On a whim, you leave your comics around the city for people to find, on bulletin boards and park benches and as a paper hat on the statue of the Mayor, and watch as people puzzle over them but can't find answers.

You think of being sixteen and in love with a girl in red glasses. You think she was wrong when she said you have a calling, because _calling_ implies you have some fucking idea what you're supposed to be doing.

And you wait for something to happen.

Three weeks later, something does.

"Dave Strider? Have a moment?"

It's a decent-looking older guy in a coat; a businessman of some sort carrying a briefcase in one hand. You've seen him around the diner you work at lately, but he doesn't ring any Crocker-esque bells in your head, so you pretty much disregarded him.

You shrug. "Sure man."

"It's about your art," he says. "Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, right?"

That was probably the one thing you hadn't been expecting.

"Yeah, they're mine." You squint at the guy, frankly a little bemused. "I am the artist. It's me. You're a fan of shitty comics?

"I'm fascinated by them," he says eagerly. "I've never seen a style like that."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Absolutely!" He gestures widely in the air. "They're deceptively shallow, and when you look past the shallowness they're _still_ shallow. But they're somehow intriguing in a way that can't be fully understood by logical reasoning."

"Story of my life, dude," you say.

"Yes, exactly!" he enthuses. "I feel your comics reflect a part of the struggle of being human and finding meaning in a chaotic world but not knowing how much of that meaning is real, and the surreal nature of the quest in the first place."

"Look, man," you say. "I'm flattered, but I've got work. Maybe make it quick?"

"I'd like to offer you a job."

You blink. "Sorry?"

"Oh, I forgot to introduce myself," he says. "I'm Gerard Milton of _Modalle_ magazine. We specialize in popular eclectica, and we'd love to publish your work."

"You... want to publish SBaHJ?" you repeat. "Like, regularly?

"As often as you care to write them," Milton assures you. "We're very accommodating of our artists. I would certainly understand if you produced on an irregular schedule as inspiration allows. I'm fully supportive of artistic experimentation- our demographic adores it."

You can't help it. You laugh, doubling over and cackling for at least half a minute until you're panting for air and your stomach hurts.

You have no fucking idea what you're doing here or anywhere, and if the universe has a plan, you have no fucking idea how this would fit into it.

Milton is there, entirely unaffected by your hysterics and still watching expectantly.

"Why the hell not," you decide.

A fist bump seals the deal.

* * *

1997

You're twenty-one, and the world loves Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff.

Even you're not entirely sure why. It started out as a fringe movement, and you'd actually stared in disbelief when you got your first fan letter. (Only for a moment. You're still a cool guy, and cool guys aren't put off by fame.) Apparently the big draw was the layers of stupidity and irony- which were intentional of course- but you hadn't actually expected anyone to like it.

Then a few celebrities read it, found it interesting, mentioned it in interviews. Magazine sales picked up and then the whole thing spread in a matter of days.

The New York Times did a feature on it: _A Comedy Phenomenon: How Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff is Changing Entertainment._ They sent someone to interview you a month ago. You answered every question in rap just for kicks.

 _Modalle_ is one of the top-ten magazines on sale in the United States thanks to your comics. People don't stop buying it, even though you go weeks without drawing at all, or invert every page so it can't be read without a mirror, or slap it full of compression images from that new Cage film Con Air. (You hate that film, and you're not entirely sure why. It's terrible, sure, but there's no reason for you to take its shittiness personally.) At least once, you decided to overlay the whole thing with the text of _Juggling for Assholes_.

You aren't sure if you're testing the limits of ironic humor, or just seeing how nonsensical you can make this before someone calls you out on it. Maybe both.

No one's called you out yet.

* * *

1998

You're twenty-two, and you're a celebrity.

You have a ridiculous income and international adulation and complete artistic freedom with your creations. You've taken comedy to a level of irony it's never achieved before, and you're doing something you've loved since you were a kid.

So _why_ are you still- fucking- dissatisfied?

Rich, poor, travelling, staying put, making music, making comics, holding back, taking risks- none of it made any difference.

You still miss people you never knew.

You still want to hurry to finish a quest you never got.

You still feel each tick of the clock like thunder in your bones.

You don't like the taste of alcohol but you drink anyway, just to see if the world makes more sense when you're not sober. It doesn't; you just get dizzy and apparently become a lot more creative with your vocabulary. You file this information away for later but don't bother drinking again.

You take fencing lessons for the hell of it.

Your reasoning was _why not?_ You have money and time and a bizarre preoccupation with bladed weapons that might go away if you indulged it a little.

It doesn't exactly work out.

The instructors are patient and helpful (too patient and too helpful, though god knows why you apparently expected them to be assholes) even after you break a half dozen of their fencing foils, one after another. Fencing isn't what you were looking for.

Neither is kendo, though you give it a shot.

Or any one of a dozen other sword disciplines.

Eventually you find a guy who's willing to teach you how to fight with a broadsword, like a medieval knight or some shit, and you think, _that's it._

The sword in your hand is heavy and sharp (unbroken) but it feels natural. Natural like your turntables, natural like your rap. Not perfect, but almost there. Like you just got a little more control over the shitstorm that is your life.

You quit the lessons, though. You have the feeling you won't ever find the teacher you're looking for.

* * *

1999

You're twenty-three when you finally catch up.

You're Hollywood's youngest director, and you're bringing _Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff_ to the silver screen in all its glory. Three studios gave you offers, and the one you agreed to is giving you complete artistic freedom as the writer, director, and producer of _SBaHaJ: The Movle._

You've announced the release date for the spring, but in reality you think you'll start in January. When it does, you intend to play it randomly in isolated theaters without any publicity, possibly in short segments in the middle of other airing films. Buy a ticket to _The Matrix_? Tough shit; you're gonna watch people fall down stairs for a solid eighteen minutes.

You're in Hollywood, at a red-carpet gala celebrating the announcement of _The Movle_.

You're wearing a T-shirt and jeans and nodding as famous actors and actresses pass by in evening gowns and tuxedos. Milton is off schmoozing with enthusiasm.

You watch from behind your mirrored shades and give one-syllable answers to all the people who come up to congratulate you. They probably think you're being ironic- and maybe you are on some level- but mostly you just don't feel much like talking.

"Excuse me," someone says. "Mr. Strider?"

You turn- and stop dead in your tracks.

She's young, in her twenties no doubt. She's got the china-doll look going on, with white-blond hair coiffed around her ears and perfect black lipstick and heavy eyeliner. A low-cut black cocktail dress and fishnets that would have ordinarily been pretty distracting escape your interest as you're caught in her sharp violet eyes.

And you _know her_.

Not the faint sense of familiarity you feel sometimes when you aren't supposed to, passing strangers on the street. No, this isn't just someone you know. This is another John Crocker. This is someone you're _supposed to know_.

She offers you a hand.

You look at it for a moment, and then shake it gingerly. You feel like if you touch her she might disappear- she's part of the answer to your questions, and never before has the universe made anything so convenient for you.

"Who are you?" you say, and it comes out more accusatory than you really meant it.

"Rose Lalonde," she says. "And you're Dave Strider."

"Yeah."

She's silent for a moment. Then she takes a deep breath and lets it out, like she's trying to calm her nerves.

"Mr. Strider," she says at last. "Sorry to tiptoe around it. I'm afraid I've been waiting so long to meet you that it's hard to come out and say what I need to tell you."

You raise an eyebrow.

She shakes her head, impatient with herself. "I'd just like to ask you in advance to give me the benefit of the doubt and try to suspend your disbelief. An open mind allows critical thought to lead one to embrace the unlikely truth, I find—"

"Ma'am," you say, bringing out your Texan drawl you haven't used in years. "Get to the fucking point."

She nods. "Right."

There's a pause.

"Do you ever have a feeling," she begins. "Like you came here for a purpose but you don't know what that purpose is?"

"Pretty sure most everyone does at some point, darlin'."

"No. A little more specific than that." She sighs. "Dave- sorry, Mr. Strider- my whole life I've known that I'm here on this earth for a reason. I'm not talking about a divine plan. I mean there is a very specific quest that I was sent here to accomplish."

You know what she's going to say before she says it.

She looks up at you. "Recently, I learned that it's your quest too."

She's desperate for you to believe her. You can hear it in her voice, though she's taking pains to keep her tone smooth and calm and neutral. She's scared of being alone.

So are you.

"Finally," you say. "We've been running out of time for years now."

* * *

 **I may at some point continue this as a oneshot from Rose's perspective. For now, consider it complete.**


End file.
